


Day 22: Snowed in

by ConsultingPurplePants



Series: 25 Days of Fic-Mas (originally posted to tumblr) [22]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Snowed In, Sussex, happy ending!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5497127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingPurplePants/pseuds/ConsultingPurplePants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is ignoring John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 22: Snowed in

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance.

John parts the curtains to look at the bee hives in the field behind the cottage, barely visible through the suddenly swirling snow, and heaves a frustrated sigh. Sherlock is buzzing around behind him, doing God-knows-what, and once again John has been dragged somewhere without being told why or how long they were going to be there. Ever since he’d moved back in with Sherlock after the Mary Fiasco, Sherlock had been even more secretive than before his departure. He was always looking at documents and files, keeping John otherwise occupied so he wouldn’t catch a glimpse (usually by blowing something up in the kitchen and demanding that he clean it up). He left at odd hours of the night, had murmured phone calls that were clearly not in English, and sometimes disappeared for hours at a time, leaving John sick with worry. He’s been so thoroughly ignored that he’s starting to wonder if moving back in with Sherlock was the right thing to do.

John closes the curtains abruptly and takes a look around the sitting room of the cottage. It’s quite spacious, full of squashy antique furniture and tasteful decorations. The kitchen is large and well-equipped, there is a king-sized bedroom at the end of the hall, and John, as has become the norm since he moved back in, has absolutely no idea what they’re doing here. He throws himself into the squashier-looking armchair and looks for Sherlock, finally spotting him tucked into a corner of the kitchen, muttering into his phone in… Russian? John’s patience, already worn thin over the past six months, is about to snap.

John taps his fingers impatiently against the arm rest of the chair until Sherlock finally hangs up the phone. Sherlock comes into the sitting room, face completely blank, and suddenly, John has to know.

“Sherlock, for God’s sake, what the fuck are we doing in Sussex on Christmas Eve?”

Sherlock waves a dismissive hand at him, throws, “Not now, John,” over his shoulder and prepares to vanish into the bedroom, and just like that, John is done.

He rises slowly from the armchair, hands perfectly steady as he feels an undercurrent of fury course warmly through his veins. His voice emerges low and dangerous, layered with months of simmering anger. “Sherlock. What. Are we doing. In Sussex. On Christmas Eve?”

Sherlock, who had been reaching for the bedroom’s door knob, clearly hears the sharp edge in his voice, because he turns around very slowly to face John, hands twitching to stop themselves from rising to a defensive position.  
“John…” he says, but goes no further. John’s anger is an electric crackle in the still air of the cottage.

John’s voice is even quieter when he replies, “You never wanted me to move back in with you, did you?” He doesn’t make it a question. He states it as a fact.  
Sherlock’s hands are shaking from trying to keep them under control. “John… I –,” he begins, but still can’t seem to complete a full sentence, can’t seem to defend himself.

It’s not that he can’t defend himself, John decides. It’s that he won’t. John marches over to his coat on its hook and yanks it on angrily before clenching his fist around the door knob. “I’ll move out when we get back –,” he so carefully avoids saying the word home, “— from this God-forsaken town.”

He hears a stifled sort of sniffing noise as he yanks on the handle, but he’s done with this. He needs to leave before the full impact of Sherlock not wanting him around sinks in. It takes him a full thirty seconds to realize that the door hasn’t moved an inch.

He slowly turns back towards Sherlock, his left fist clenching around the open air by his hip as he meets Sherlock’s suddenly fearful gaze.

“Let me out.” He lets his tone add the now for him.

Sherlock is frozen in place.

“Sherlock. Let me out.” He takes a threatening step towards him, and only then does Sherlock seem to unfreeze before stammering, “We’re… we’re snowed in, John.”

And now, the raging snowstorm outside is a perfect reflection of John’s fury. He whips around and starts for the bedroom, needing to be anywhere but near the man who has basically just admitted he will never love him back. There had been so much potential, before. But then there had been Mary. And Sherlock had been shot. And for some reason, John had thought he would be welcomed back to Baker Street with open arms. In hindsight, his own naïve stupidity is enough to make him want to wring his past self’s neck. Why would Sherlock have wanted him back? His wife had just shot him, for Christ’s sake.

He makes it halfway down the hallway before he hears a tiny peep behind him that may just have been his name. He pauses, but refuses to turn around when he hears, “John, wait. Please.”

Still facing the door, he clenches and unclenches his fist again before growling back, “What do you want, Sherlock.”

“John, I –,” Sherlock starts, and the dam holding in John’s emotions explodes into a million pieces.

“I can’t deal with this, Sherlock, not now. When we get back to Baker Street, I’ll gather my things and get out of the flat. You can have your space back, you won’t have to deal with seeing a reminder of your gunshot wound every time I enter a room. I wasn’t sure I’d be welcomed back to the flat, but for Christ’s sake why couldn’t you have just told me you didn’t want me there? It’s like I don’t exist. It’s literally as if I was not in that flat with you, and _what the fuck are we even doing in Sussex right now, Sherlock_? What the _fuck_ are we –”

“I BOUGHT US THE COTTAGE, JOHN!” Sherlock shouts into the suddenly deafening silence. There’s the sound of panting from behind John, and in his complete surprise he allows himself to turn around. He almost wishes he hadn’t.

He has never seen Sherlock look like this. His eyes are red-rimmed and leaking from the corners, his hair looks like he’s been trying to pull it out by the roots, and while he’s always been pale, right now he’s as pale as death.

“I bought us the cottage, John,” he rasps out, his voice cracking on John’s name.  
And there it is again. Us. John can’t wrap his head around what’s happening.

“If you can’t stand my presence in a flat, Sherlock, I doubt it will be better tolerated in a cottage.” They both jump when a gust of wind slams into the windows, and this seems to break something in Sherlock, because suddenly he’s rambling.

“It’s because there are bee hives in the field, and I’ve always wanted to keep bees when I retired, and I thought that since there were so many bookshelves you could publish all the blog entries into books and fill the shelves with them, and we could sit by the fire when it got cold and we wouldn’t mind so much if we got snowed in, and it’s just far enough from town that if I’m experimenting in the kitchen it won’t startle anyone,” he keeps going, sounding increasingly desperate, but the words are lost to John because he’s still stuck on _I retired_ and _you could publish_.

He holds up his hand to stop the tide of words cascading out of Sherlock’s mouth, and there’s a tense pause before he whispers, “Are you saying you want to retire with me?” at the same time as Sherlock gasps out, “Please don’t leave.”  
They stare each other down from both ends of the sitting room until John finally breaks the silence.

“Why do you want to retire with me, Sherlock?” He hadn’t denied it, after all.

Sherlock takes a deep breath before replying, “You came back. You came back, after everything, and I thought… I thought, ‘Maybe he wants this, too’. So I… I started thinking. And then. There was an ad. In the newspaper. A Russian man was selling his Sussex property. And I saw the hives, and the book shelves. And I just thought, maybe… maybe we could have this. So I just…” His lip starts to wobble dangerously, and he stops before it can turn into tears again.

John’s heart sinks into his shoes, past his shoes, straight through the floor and into the cold dirt. He makes the connection between their current location, Sherlock’s wobbling lip, and the date, and his heart shrivels further into the earth. Sherlock had meant this as a Christmas present.

Mary must have done quite the number on him, if he thinks he can’t trust _Sherlock_ , of all people.

John is the worst person in the world.

He drags himself forward, his bad leg acting up under the stress, and stops directly in front of Sherlock. Sherlock looks down at him, his eyes glassy, and John reaches up to cup his face in one hand before whispering, “I’m so, so sorry, Sherlock. I’ve ruined everything.” He tentatively wraps his arms around Sherlock, who lets out a strangled sob and buries his face in John’s shoulder.

There’s absolute silence in the cottage now, punctuated only by the gales of snow outside and John’s murmured _I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ into the top of Sherlock’s head, repeated until it turns into _I love you, I love you, I love you._

Through the damp spot on his neck, John can feel _I love you_ whispered back, and he releases Sherlock so he can take off his jacket and press him even closer.

Once they’ve calmed down, they end up lying on the soft carpet of the (their) sitting room, holding each other in a way they’d never dared to before. John can feel Sherlock’s heartbeat through his shirt where his head is resting on his chest, and it feels right in a way it never has with anyone else. He can picture it all in his head, now. Sherlock, with completely grey curls, sitting in the less squashy armchair as he reads about bees and explains why each article is wrong. John, perhaps with a bald spot, wearing reading glasses as he tries to focus on writing his blog entries and nodding along to Sherlock’s words at the same time. Both of them, tottering old men, heading off to bed together early and supporting each other through the trials of old age.

John realizes he needs this more than he needs air.

As though reading his mind, Sherlock whispers, “So you’ll stay?” into John’s ear. John turns his head up and finally, finally presses his lips to Sherlock’s. The wind whistles all around them, making the cottage creak slightly, and it’s several blasts of snow against the windows before he releases Sherlock. John smiles for the first time since Sherlock was shot.

“I’ll never leave.”


End file.
